Radical New Ideas
Modular Society
Choose your government services the way you choose your bank, insurance or cell carrier.
Chapter 1
Pressure
Life builds pressure.
It starts with money.
Then work.
Then the bigger things: how fairly we're treated, and the world we're leaving behind.
Frustration is pressure, and pressure means something is broken.
A healthy society lets it out, listens, and fixes the cause.
Every pressure cooker has a valve.
Heat builds pressure inside.
The valve lets a little out, all the time, so the pot never explodes.
So we built valves. Lots of them.
Every one does the same job: turn frustration into something you can do.
And some shadier ones.
When the front-door valves are hard to use, pressure leaks out the side.
Chapter 2
Every valve is different
Every valve has its own rules.
| Valve | When you can use it | Who decides if it works |
|---|---|---|
| Voting | Once every few years | The majority, for everyone |
| Campaigning | Election season | Other voters |
| Protesting | With a permit, in some places | Nobody, officially |
| Quitting your job | After two weeks' notice | You |
| Cancelling a service | Anytime, or when the contract ends | You, plus a fee |
| Downgrading | Next billing cycle | You |
| Leaving a review | Anytime | Strangers reading it |
| Telling friends | Anytime | Your friends |
| Half-assing work | Until your boss notices | Your boss |
| Pirating | Until you get caught | The courts |
| Moving countries | If you get a visa | Another government |
Deadlines, forms, gatekeepers. Most people never learn them all, so most pressure never gets out.
The smallest things in your life are the easiest to leave. Your streaming app cancels in a tap.
The biggest things get the stiffest valves.
Your laws, taxes and police take years to change, or a visa to escape.
Big bundles are rigid.
When everything comes in one package, nothing can change without changing it all. So it falls behind what people need.
Switching times are rough, illustrative estimates.
Switching only works if there's somewhere to switch to.
internet provider on your street
airline at your airport
app all your friends are on
A valve with nowhere to vent isn't a valve at all.
Chapter 3
Plugged valves
Some people want the valves plugged.
Authoritarians plug the political ones.
Monopolists plug the market ones.
Why? Because trapped pressure is controlled pressure.
If you can't vote them out, can't complain and can't leave, your unhappiness costs them nothing. They don't have to get better. They just have to keep the lid on.
But a plug doesn't remove pressure.
It stores it.
Eventually, something gives.
Plugged: no free elections, no free market, no leaving.
Gave: decades of black markets, then the whole union dissolved in months.3
Plugged: the Treaty of Versailles loaded Germany with war debt it had no say in.
Gave: hyperinflation and depression. Voters turned to Hitler, who promised to tear it up. Then World War II.4
Plugged: taxed by a Parliament they had no seats in.
Gave: petitions were ignored, so the colonies fought and left. Britain lost them for good.5
It happens to companies too.
Plugged: one provider per street, and 200 channels to get the 5 you wanted.
Gave: once streaming arrived, tens of millions of homes left.6
Plugged: cities capped licences, so service never had to improve.
Gave: Uber arrived. A New York medallion fell from $1.3M to under $200K.7
Plugged: $18 CDs to get the one song you wanted, and lawsuits against fans.
Gave: Napster and mass piracy. US music sales fell by more than half.8
Countries and companies alike.
Plug the valve, and the pressure finds another way out.
Little releases, or one big blast.
Open valves let pressure out a little at a time. It never gets near the breaking point.
Plugged valves look calm for years. Then they collapse.
Valves aren't a weakness.
They're what keeps the whole thing standing. A society that lets pressure out is more stable, not less.
Chapter 4
A valve that always works
What if one valve worked the same way everywhere?
Not instead of the others. Underneath them. One valve every group must have, whatever else it offers, that works the same for a country, a company or a club.
Don't like it? Go somewhere better.
No permission. No majority. No waiting.
Leaving is the floor. Every group has to offer it, and it works the same way in all of them.
Groups add their own valves on top.
A group can run itself like a democracy, a co-op or a company. Only the floor is fixed.
Leaving makes the other valves work.
It's always on: it works today, not at the next election. And it's personal: you don't have to convince millions of people.
When members can't leave, a complaint is easy to ignore.
When they can, leaders listen. Leaving gives voice teeth.
Economist Albert Hirschman called these "voice" and "exit" in 1970. Exit is what makes leaders take voice seriously.1
So why can't we just leave our government?
Because leaving a country means leaving everything at once: your home, your job, your friends, your language.
Government is one giant bundle. Too heavy to walk away from.
Break the bundle.
Make each one a separate service, the way your bank, phone plan and streaming apps already are.
Small pieces are easy to leave.
Switching banks doesn't mean moving house. Neither should switching your kid's school.
When leaving is easy, pressure comes out a little at a time, all the time. No blast.
Chapter 5
Panarchy
An old idea
Choose your government the way you choose an insurer, without moving.
First proposed by Belgian writer Paul Émile de Puydt in 1860. He called it panarchy.2
Picture four neighbours on one street.
Alex and Riley join a progressive government. Its taxes pay for their healthcare with provider A.
Riley wants more, so tops up with provider B as well.
Sam and Jordan join a conservative government: low taxes, no healthcare.
Sam buys healthcare from provider A directly. Jordan picks B.
Same street. Four different setups. Nobody had to move.
Every group is just an organization.
Government, company, church or co-op. None gets powers the others can't have.
You belong because you joined.
Not because of where you happened to be born.
Services come apart.
One organization can sell firefighting or courts to members of many others.
The only rule
Anyone may leave. No one may be held.
Everything else is a deal between people who chose to be there. One tiny rule is hard to twist, capture or bury in exceptions.
Leaving can cost you.
Like breaking a phone contract early: you might owe a fee, and they can collect it like any debt.
It can't be stopped.
Nobody can lock the door. Not with walls, not with guards, not with threats.
Good organizations will even pay your exit fee to win you over, just like phone carriers do today.
Long promises still work.
Want a safety net? Join a caring organization while you're young, before you know if you'll be rich, and agree to pay in by income.
If you later leave for a low-tax group, the debt comes with you.
Fairness becomes something you can sign up for.
Who protects the right to leave?
Asylum
Others take in anyone escaping, and won't send them back.
Refusal to deal
No trade, no currency, no land recognition for groups that trap people.
Exit guarantors
Organizations that sell escape as a service. Joining one signals "you can always leave."
Coalitions
As a last resort, everyone acts together against a group that holds its members.
No world government needed. It works the way countries enforce treaties today.
It takes no side.
High taxes, universal healthcare, strong safety net.
Traditional values, low taxes, local control.
Shared land, shared work, shared everything.
Each can build exactly the society it wants. None can force you to join.
It would probably look… familiar.
Most people would join something like a government today: security, courts and land, in one package. Many would still hold elections inside.
The difference? You chose it. And you could choose another.
The hard questions
Fighting is expensive.
Most disputes would be negotiated, the way insurers settle claims. But history says this one needs proof.
Big is fine. Trapping isn't.
The danger is a group strong enough to end the right to leave. Medieval Iceland shows it can happen.9
The weakest point.
Nobody owns the climate. It depends on treaties between organizations. Still an open question.
Pressure always finds a way out.
The only question is whether we build the valve, or wait for the blast.
Make leaving the one rule every group must follow.
Break government into services you can switch.
Let people choose, without moving.
Sources
- Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970): Wikipedia
- Paul Émile de Puydt, "Panarchy" (1860): Wikipedia
- Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Wikipedia
- Treaty of Versailles and reparations: Wikipedia; hyperinflation: Wikipedia
- "No taxation without representation": Wikipedia
- Cord-cutting: Wikipedia
- New York taxi medallion prices: The New York Times
- US recorded music revenue by year: RIAA U.S. Sales Database; Napster: Wikipedia
- The Icelandic Commonwealth and its end: Wikipedia
Switching times and the four-neighbour street are illustrative examples, not published figures.